At the Visa Payments Forum 2026, the global payments providers revealed a suite of technologies centered on artificial intelligence, stablecoins, and enhanced digital tokens. According to the update from Visa (NYSE: V), these developments aim to support the rise of intelligent and programmable commerce while maintaining high standards of trust, security, and reliability in an ecosystem of increasing automation.
Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, highlighted two major transformations reshaping finance during his keynote address.
“AI is changing how commerce begins on the consumer side, while stablecoins are updating the infrastructure behind the scenes,” he noted.
Visa’s mission, he explained, involves bridging these shifts with secure, scalable solutions that benefit all parties in the payments ecosystem.
Visa is advancing its platform for agent-driven commerce, known as Visa Intelligent Commerce.
This system equips AI agents with the necessary safeguards, oversight, and connections to safely identify opportunities, start processes, and finalize purchases on behalf of users and companies.
Key tools include the Agent Score, developed in collaboration with New Generation.
It helps retailers assess how well their online platforms support AI interactions, checking whether automated systems can effectively browse, interpret content, and finish tasks.
The company also introduced an Agentic Directory, which verifies legitimate AI agents and merchants. This mutual trust mechanism ensures secure interactions between verified parties.
In a notable alliance, Visa teamed up with OpenAI to integrate protected payment options into AI-powered experiences.
The partnership leverages Visa’s worldwide network, verification tools, and protective measures to foster confident transactions between people, businesses, and AI systems.
Additionally, Visa developed a Large Transaction Model trained on vast transaction datasets. This AI tool strengthens fraud prevention, boosts approval rates, and cuts unnecessary rejections—an ongoing challenge in the sector.
Early prototypes from Visa’s Crypto Labs showcased an AI agent using tokenized credentials via a command-line interface to purchase digital services directly.
Forestell emphasized growing developer reliance on AI tools and efforts to optimize card payments in these environments.
Visa is expanding its token technology by embedding additional context, such as transaction details, usage location, and initiator information.
A new assurance signal evaluates tokens throughout their lifespan based on issuance patterns and activity, delivering stronger confidence indicators for decision-making.
These improvements deliver better authorization insights for banks, fewer declined legitimate purchases for sellers, and smoother experiences for shoppers.
By incorporating identity, access rights, and behavior data directly into credentials, trust becomes portable across platforms and autonomous AI actions.
On the backend, Visa is progressing with stablecoin integration and blockchain infrastructure.
It plans to enable banks to convert standard deposits into flexible, programmable digital assets that remain on their balance sheets, offering speed comparable to stablecoins.
Settlement pilots have expanded across regions, networks, and currencies. Following initial tests in early 2025, the company has processed billions in stablecoin volume through its network, reaching an annualized pace of about $7 billion by March 2026.
Issuers already benefit from seven-day-a-week on-chain processing, with plans to extend this to acquirers.
Visa is also scaling programs that link stablecoin holdings to cards, allowing seamless spending wherever Visa is accepted. Over 160 such initiatives are active or underway worldwide.
Recognizing that complete overhauls are often impractical, Visa offers modular, cloud-based options that layer onto existing systems.
Tools like the Pismo platform support real-time banking for issuers, while Unified Checkout and Intelligent Authorization help merchants and acquirers handle diverse payment types and improve approval rates.
These announcements now aim to stragegically position Visa as a central connector for AI, programmable value, and trusted global infrastructure. Forestell concluded that success in new commerce ecosystems depends on combining responsible innovation with security and reach.
